Simple Trick For A 2 Gorge Team
padijun
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3419Members
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3419Members
This worked wonderfully on EDIT: (nancy, not caged) last night... thought I'd share.
I told the other gorge to build 1 or 2 RTs and I'll handle the rest while he saved for a hive. the other 6 or so skulks kept them in their base. We started out in the no-name hive. I built RTs on the nozzle near the no-name hive (in that little room that the maintenance shaft leads into), in the mess hall, upstairs of the mess hall, and near the subspace hive. The other gorge built one in the port engine room and maybe one other location. Long story short, he had a hive up in an extremely small amount of time. We then put up defenses at both hives and around our RTs. Then I put up the subspace hive.
Something that so many gorges don't understand is that in the early game, RT defense should be manual. Don't bother putting up those O/D chambers (except maybe a few for upgrades) until you have hive #2 up. Marines are extremely paranoid about attacking a RT by themselves for fear of a skulk chomping them from behind. And with those 5-6 RTs we had, our hive went up extremely fast and helped us get fades even more quickly, which meant they were pinned in their base tighter. Even if they did start taking down the RTs, the damage was done, and the fades would soon be in effect to win them back for us.
Now, I guess this strategy worked so well because of our skulks. They were awesome. Twice I nearly died to some marines, only to have 2 skulks rush in their and save my life. This plan could fail if the marines were heavily coordinated and had left their base at the start, though still, they can't be in all places at once unless they split up, and then they're skulk food.
I told the other gorge to build 1 or 2 RTs and I'll handle the rest while he saved for a hive. the other 6 or so skulks kept them in their base. We started out in the no-name hive. I built RTs on the nozzle near the no-name hive (in that little room that the maintenance shaft leads into), in the mess hall, upstairs of the mess hall, and near the subspace hive. The other gorge built one in the port engine room and maybe one other location. Long story short, he had a hive up in an extremely small amount of time. We then put up defenses at both hives and around our RTs. Then I put up the subspace hive.
Something that so many gorges don't understand is that in the early game, RT defense should be manual. Don't bother putting up those O/D chambers (except maybe a few for upgrades) until you have hive #2 up. Marines are extremely paranoid about attacking a RT by themselves for fear of a skulk chomping them from behind. And with those 5-6 RTs we had, our hive went up extremely fast and helped us get fades even more quickly, which meant they were pinned in their base tighter. Even if they did start taking down the RTs, the damage was done, and the fades would soon be in effect to win them back for us.
Now, I guess this strategy worked so well because of our skulks. They were awesome. Twice I nearly died to some marines, only to have 2 skulks rush in their and save my life. This plan could fail if the marines were heavily coordinated and had left their base at the start, though still, they can't be in all places at once unless they split up, and then they're skulk food.
Comments
I find it much more helpfull to get a bunch of resource towers up quick than defended a few ..
If you have 2 gorges it works even better because one can get hives up and the other can get towers.. Once you have a bunch of towers up it's just a matter of time before you get hives and can defend everything.
However I do think it is important to secure your first hive at least a little. If your whole team abandons the hive and it is wide open marines could come in shoot down your hive quick and game over.
good tip though, many people just go straight for hives and save without doing anything... just 2 nozzles and saving.
Yeah... I've known about the whole "quantity over quality" thing for a while, now, but I see it so infrequently used that I'm trying to get the word out. It annoys me to death to see one RT with 3 offense and 2 defense chambers on it, and no second hive.
If you have skulks that can get to the towers quickly, if the towers are out of the way, or if the marine team is actively being bottled up, then consider building towers without defense. The fact is that you should do a cost-benefit analysis. Even rebuilding a tower once isn't too expensive, nowhere near the cost of making a full defense.
When you do build defenses at towers, they should probably also be choke points. The Mess Hall would be a great example on ns_nancy, as those offense and defense towers really do more than just sit and safeguard the resource.
You'd be surprised how often certain tower locations can go unmolested. A good example would be the Freight Elevator Access nozzle on ns_caged. I've taken that as a gorge and left it there unnoticed for the entire game. Tossing up a couple of offense chambers would have certainly led to its destruction in that case, as the marines would have noticed it instead of running by.
Of course, as I said before, it really is a cost-benefit analysis. If you think that the marines are going to take an area very soon or they are sieging nearby, or if you think it's an important choke point, those aren't places to set up undefended towers. But early in the game in particular, just tossing up towers isn't too bad.
[Edit]
And as an addition to this, I've found something that I've mentioned before which can work very well if you get pinned down by a scout marine as a gorge. If I'm behind a resource tower, I'll circle and keep the tower between me and the marine while I use my healing breath. Most marines rush in, assuming you're trying to heal the tower. What you really want to do, though, is hit them with the healing spray through the tower. I've killed more than one marine with healing spray this way. Of course, if the comm begins dropping health for the marine, you're fairly screwed, but hopefully you buy some time for backup.
Moreover, the agressive tower grabbing does tend to work better when you have two gorges. That way one gorge can toss up one tower at the prospective hive location while the other works on grabbing resources, then returns to def up the second hive. Of course, you need to moderate this as you will according to the marine team's actions and success, but it can work well if you have good skulks.
[/Edit]
Basically, a skulk with carapace is twice as effective as a skulk without. Get a def chamber up ASAP, _before the second hive. Grab one nozzle, make a def chamber in the hive, then go save up for the second hive. There are _always one to five other gorges trying to set up resource towers, normally dying while doing so.
One additional nozzle is all you need, at the start. Two is nice, more is overkill.
Putting that def chamber in the hive, near the hive, means skulks can run back, heal twice as fast, and be back out there keeping the pressure on the marines. And yes, I commonly end up with a sliver of health after jumping a few marines, at least when I have carapace.
And yes, having 3 def chambers is even better, but you can get one up fast, and it does make a significant difference. The rule of thumb I use, if I get to 33 resources (as a skulk) and no one has made a def chamber, I'll go gorge long enough to make one.